The Strawberry Ducks
by Irrevocable Truth
Summary: Him - the jerk who can't keep up a straight conversation. Her - the nerd who's madly in love with strawberries. Them – two socially awkward people with nothing to lose and everything to gain.


**WARNING! **The author shall not be held liable for the minutes you shall probably waste reading through this crap. You have been warned.

* * *

**The Strawberry Ducks  
**By: Irrevocable Truth

* * *

When Natsume Hyuuga moved into the house next door five years ago, Mikan Sakura was ecstatic.

She jumped around the house, squealing like the ten-year-old female that she was. She baked a strawberry cake, too – her absolute favorite dessert ever – to commemorate the special day. She trudged along the sidewalk, moving swiftly across their neighbor's front porch to ring the doorbell.

The raven-haired male opened the door, and simply stared at the girl in pigtails and a Sunday dress, without the greeting that she had probably expected.

She shifted her weight to her other foot before extending the box containing the cake right in front of his face. "Good afternoon! I'm your neighbor. My name's Mikan. It's nice to meet you. What's your name? Can we be friends?"

His mind swirled with the sudden bombardment of questions. He'd never been a fan of conversation. "Rubber ducks," he piped.

Mikan blinked. "What?"

"Rubber ducks," he repeated slowly. "Print. Dress. Immature."

"Are you, like, foreign, or something? Incapable of straight English sentences?" Her eyebrows knitted in confusion. "I mean, I just can't understand you when you talk to me in disconnected words." Mikan beamed at him, but he glared.

"I can talk fine," he said, swiping the box of cake from her hands. "I just think idiots like you wearing rubber duck printed dresses shouldn't be standing in front of my house on our first day here. You're leaving a bad impression on the other neighbors." Then he slammed the door in her face.

Five years since then, and in a quirky sort of way, they'd become best friends. (Because the best sort of friendships start in the most unlikely way.)

* * *

When she gave him a tulip for their 1000th day of meeting each other, he figured she was indirectly insulting his manliness.

That, he presumed, was the catalyst to his sudden involvement around school. He ran for student body president (and won by a landslide, thanks to the fangirls), signed up for the soccer team (where girls ogled at him), and even became basketball captain (where girls _still_ ogled at him).

His head hurt, though. Not only was he gaining popularity that he didn't want (because really, he hated having to make public speeches or indulge in any sort of talk), the opposite of what he wanted was happening. Mikan was growing farther and farther away from him, and that sucked because, well, aside from Ruka, she was the only one he had straight conversations with.

The most heart-breaking of all, though, was when she called at 11 PM and said "Isn't it a beautiful day today, Natsume?" He was feeling like crap, because not only did he work his butt off at soccer practice, he had to prepare for the regional basketball competition only three days from then, _and_ he had Student Council paperwork to finish. So he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "Yeah, just plain _beautiful_. I'd really rather not hear about how _wonderful_ your day went. Tell me about the frilly pinks and rainbows some other day, alright?"

Mikan hiccupped on the other end of the phone, murmured, "You jerk," and then ended the call.

It was only at seven the next morning, when Ruka burst into his room shouting at him for being insensitive, that he realized it had been Mikan's birthday.

* * *

"So let me sum this up for you," came Hotaru's stoic voice. "You're basically telling me that you're in love with your best friend of five years, even though you think he's an _ass who doesn't deserve all these butterflies in your stomach and random spurts of tingling sensations in your spine_, is that correct?"

Mikan looked up from her notebook full of trigonometric functions. "_Second_ best friend, Hotaru. You'll always be number one." She smiled at her, before returning to her previous dilemma of finding the angular and linear speed of a point on this make-believe, math-problem wheel.

"Whatever," Hotaru scoffed. "With all that information in that brain of yours, you should know that this whole bad guy-good girl cliché is overrated. Not to mention you're also throwing in the best friend ordeal AND the neighbor-who-moved-in circumstance."

"I know! Isn't it romantic?" Mikan sighed dreamily, once again distracted from her problem solving. The waitress arrived not long afterwards, preventing Hotaru from expressing how she thought this was all very stupid.

"One strawberry frappe and one mocha cappuccino?" The waiter smiled.

* * *

"What's that?" Natsume asked, peering over Mikan's shoulder.

"Oh this is—"

"When did _you_ get here!" Mikan shrieked, immediately swiping the sketchbook shut and stuffing it inside her backpack. Natsume shrugged, before saying, "Just wanted to know if you needed a walk home. Soccer practice was cancelled."

Mikan sighed in relief, almost caught red-handed drawing doodles of the man himself – Natsume – in her sketchbook. Sumire'd challenged her to embark on a creative spree, to draw everything that inspired or interested her, but in her case the two seemed to tantamount to the same things – her best friend and strawberries. She made a mental note of how limited her life had become. Mikan groaned, banging her head on the nearby wall.

"S'that a yes?" Natsume asked.

Mikan gave him a sideways glance and grinned. "Of course, you ass."

* * *

When things went wrong, the first person Mikan ran to was Natsume. She hated having to rely on Hotaru too much, and Natsume made her feel like she could stay under the shadow of his wings forever and feel eternally safe.

But this time she didn't, because what was she supposed to say? I'm attracted to you, like north pole and south pole, like I'm a proton and you're an electron, like I'm a one-to-one function and you're my inverse.

No, of course not. That wouldn't even _begin_ to fathom what she was feeling.

So she trudged lightly onwards, trying to ignore his picture on her bedroom desk (because back when they were eleven, she got her first camera, and he became her first model), his name plastered all across the school (because he was, after all, president), and moreover, him in the flesh whenever he attempted to come over to her house, like he usually did.

Sooner or later she gave in, though, and they were back to how they usually were –late-nights watching chick flicks (which Natsume hated) and horror movies (which Mikan hated), eating lunch together even though their cliques normally didn't mesh, debating over ideas, and being idiots running around with water guns.

"This is so amazing," she said, lying down on the grass, her eyes hidden behind closed eyelids. She was savoring each particle: how the grass smelled of the morning, how the rustling of the leaves reminded her of the ocean, how the sky seemed so big and so real and so _infinite_.

Natsume sat up, looked at her, and said, "Yeah, you really are."

Mikan's eyes shot open to look at his, but he said nothing.

* * *

When Mikan Sakura arrived at his doorstep the first day he'd moved, Natsume Hyuuga was genuinely fazed.

He hated the way she looked so stupid in those rubber ducks and pigtails, but at the same time he was drawn to her warm disposition.

And when he slammed the door in her face, he remembered the pure look of sadness in her eyes. It wasn't pity, like how some kids looked down on him for being anti-social; it wasn't disappointment, like how some people wanted to be with him for some personal gain. Just sadness, and for a moment he was tempted to open the door again and apologize.

But he watched from the window as she scribbled something on a note, stuck it onto his door, and left without another word. He waited a few minutes after she turned the corner before he went to inspect the message she'd left.

_sorry I was rude, and next time I will not wear rubber duck prints for sure, so maybe next time we can be friends? I hope you like my strawberry cake, it's my favorite desert.  
__-mikan_

You spelled dessert wrong, he noted.

His lips formed a fractional curve at the thought of her.

* * *

"Let me sum this up for you," came Ruka's gentle tone. "You're in love with your best friend of five years – who you claim to be _too intelligent_ _for her own good and too flat-chested for your taste_—and you flippin' haven't told her yet?"

Natsume shrugged, his eyes browsing the stocks that were available in this store, and Ruka continued. "Great, Natsume. Just great. And I thought _I_ was supposed to be the spineless one." When Natsume grunted, he added, "Hey, it was just an observation, man. I mean seriously. You're the student body president, basketball captain, soccer player, plus your grades are paralleled only by her and Imai. People would think this love life business would be easy for you."

"Well, it's not," Natsume replied, grabbing something he figured he'd buy, and walking over towards the counter.

"Because you don't want it to be," Ruka emphasized. "Jesus, man. Get it through your head already. It's not as complicated as you think. Just tell her."

Natsume scoffed, pulled out a bill from his wallet, and handed it to the cashier. She handed him his change and receipt with an easy smile. "Will that be all, sir?"

* * *

"Don't even—"

"HAHAHAHA! You look so stupid! Oh my God, my stomach hurts from laughing." Mikan doubled over in laughter, slamming her palm onto the table with a haughty _bam_. "Koko signed you up for this, didn't he?"

Natsume cursed at the mention of the sly devil's name. "Yeah, that cheeky little." He readjusted the bow on his tuxedo, before grabbing a rose from a nearby vase and practically shoving it in her face. "There. Job done."

He was about to walk away, but Mikan caught his wrist. "You're supposed to make me fall in love with you, you know. That's why it's called the _Fall In Love With A Hot Guy_ booth." Mikan burst into laughter again, but abruptly stopped when she felt his arms around her shoulders.

"You _can't_ fall in love with me," he whispered. "Anyone else. Just not you. I'm too much of a mess for you." So soft it was almost just the faint gush of air.

But I already have, she wanted to say. But she didn't.

* * *

There was no _when_, there was no _where_, there was only a _why_. Why they got together, why they suddenly decided that friendship wasn't enough, why things were going to last forever.

Things just started falling together. How reason suddenly fit into the puzzle, how cake and conversations just_ belonged_. Because there was no puzzle in the first place. There were only their hearts, separated but together, worn and torn but fresh and vibrant.

There was no _I love you_, no roses, no promises. (It was only later: as the lights died out and they sat on the garden swings, looking up at the stars and wondering where they were going to be five years from now, that they realized all they ever really wanted to be all those weeks from now was right in the arms of each other.)

.

**(the end.)**

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**author's note**. this story is dedicated to two of my PM buddies, _Ariisha-chan_ (you beat me to dedicating something, though XD) and _foxtrotelly_, because you guys rock for putting up with me and my idiotic replies in our private messages to each other. sorry it's a plethora of clichés, by the way. I just thought it'd be nice to try out. and for the others, I hope this is a semi-compensation for not updating more frequently. D: (and I know, I know, my timeline is totally messed-up and it might not have made sense and the ending's just crappy and I used too many _when_'s because it was supposed to be a sort of style & I failed immensely but I just wanted to get this over with because ackk my brain hurts from the ideas. forgive me?)

**disclaimer**. gakuen alice rightfully belongs to higuchi tachibana, not me. I am merely a person who happened to watch the anime and decided that writing for it would be way too awesome to pass up. cheers!


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